


Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.

by winterover



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: Accidentally High, Drugs, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterover/pseuds/winterover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His first day in San Francisco, Bones is put to work at the Academy clinic. Jim accidentally gets stoned. Of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.

**Author's Note:**

> For a kink meme prompt I can't find now, but which I probably deviated from, anyway.

McCoy isn't sure if the student clinic'll even take him, looking as he does - scruffy, puffy-eyed, still in rumpled civvies and smelling of the whiskey from his flask and the cold sweat he'd broken out in as soon as the shuttle had left the ground.

But the lineups of new cadets waiting for their mandatory medical exams snake out the door and across the sunny quad, halfway to the science building, and the woman checking ID chips and juggling PADDs and assigning numbers looks at McCoy like he's Jesus Christ descending from on high on a rainbow cloud when he elbows his way through the crowd and slaps his own ID down on her counter, ignoring the halfhearted protests from the kids at the front of the line. "Leonard McCoy. I was told to report here."

"Oh, thank goodness. We're completely understaffed; I don't know _what_ they're thinking, sending everyone over here at once. They at least staggered them a little last semester. Back room, there should be a spare set of scrubs somewhere around. Then you can find a PADD and start familiarizing yourself -"

"Got it," he says shortly, cutting her off. He knows the drill.

It's easy enough to find things back there - then he locks himself into the staff bathroom and strips, splashing water on his face and neck and underarms in a sad approximation of a shower before pulling the scrubs on and stuffing his smelly clothes into his bag and stowing it in a corner out of the way. He doesn't have a locker yet, but it doesn't matter. It's busy, and nobody will care, or even notice. This place is a lot like the Atlanta ER he'd worked at, only all the patients are eighteen, wearing red, and irritatingly bright-eyed in a way he'd never been at their age.

Frankly, he'd rather be back in Georgia.

*

McCoy taps the PADD to bring up the first question, rattling it off with no attempt to hide his boredom. "Please state your legal name, cultural designation, or chosen personal referent."

"Gary Mitchell."

"No middle name?"

"Oh, sorry. It's on my ID."

"Humor me," McCoy says flatly, and Mitchell rolls his eyes.

"Thomas."

 _Mitchell, Gary Thomas._ "Date of birth?"

"Doctor, it's _right_ on my ID. You can check it. Really." God, he's so annoying and young and shiny and insufferable. "My height and sex and blood type are all there, too."

"Fine." McCoy passes over those, though he's technically supposed to get the answers from the horse's mouth, as it were. Oh, well. Bureaucratic trivialities. "List any illnesses and/or injuries incurred within the past five years and resultant treatments or surgeries."

"Uh, not really any. I've caught a couple colds...oh, I chipped a tooth playing baseball. Got it fixed at the dentist. That's all."

Good. Less information to enter. "Do you habitually partake in any sexual activity which could be considered risky, physically compromising, personally endangering or a danger to others, or illegal? If so, elaborate."

Mitchell chokes. " _Excuse_ me?" McCoy doesn't blame him for being shocked; he's not exactly happy having to hear about the private exploits of these cringing red-faced cadets, himself, just so Starfleet can do a damn risk assessment and psychological profile, but it's his job now, and if he has to suck it up, so do they.

"You heard me. That, unfortunately, _isn't_ on your ID."

"W-wait, isn't this a violation of my civil rights?"

"This ain't grade school, kid. Your life is Starfleet's now. Congratulations. If it's any consolation, I'm legally barred from telling anybody outside of 'Fleet Medical any of this, so if you like strangling yourself with fuzzy handcuffs or jerking off while bungee jumping or whatever the hell, rest assured it isn't gonna get out."

"No, nothing like that," Mitchell stammers, and McCoy grimly makes a note of it. He's counting down the seconds until lunch.

"Have you ever contracted any sexually transmitted infections?"

*

"Please state your name."

"Gaila."

"First or last?"

"Only."

McCoy stabs at the screen with his forefinger. When he looks up, Only-Gaila already has her shirt off. Her bra is red lace, almost grotesque against her green skin and orange hair, though her body is...wow.

He scowls.

"What? Aren't you going to examine me, Doctor?" Her smile is brilliant.

"We're not finished filling out the form," he points out irritably. She's trying to seduce him...maybe...but he's tired and cranky and she's just a patient to him right now, another person standing between him and a well-deserved sandwich. His stomach feels like it's got a marble rattling around inside. "I don't see a Terran date of birth listed here."

"I don't know what the equivalent date is on Earth. But I'm old enough to know I like _stubble_ on a human male."

McCoy makes a mental note to shave.

*

Thirty or so patients in, and he's barely even bothering to look up anymore. He fills in the forms, tries his best to be patient if they stutter too much (Starfleet, bunch of goddamn perverts), does the scan and the manual check, gives the necessary inoculations, and sends them on their way. By this point, he almost feels like he's sleepwalking through it.

The next one saunters in and hops up on the bed as he's re-setting the PADD. Pants, McCoy registers, and big feet, so odds are it's a guy, but he's always up for a surprise.

"Name," he says to the screen. Why bother with all those words when one will do just fine?

"Kirk, James T. Don't ask what the T stands for."

McCoy blinks at what he's just entered. Familiar name. The voice, too. He looks slowly up only to meet the blue eyes and lopsided smirk of the kid from Iowa, the one he'd shared his whiskey with and then, regrettably, puked the whiskey up on before putting his head between his knees and hyperventilating into his sleeves for the rest of the flight. He looks different, in the red uniform and not covered in dry, crusted blood. "Smart-ass kid from the shuttle."

"Drunk phobic wearing four sweaters. Pleasure." Kirk sprawls comfortably on the bed like he's on a towel at the beach, and McCoy narrows his eyes. "So you really are a doctor?"

"Why the hell would I lie?" McCoy turns back to his questionnaire. Kirk's recruitment form is almost empty, except for his name and place of residence. He really is just off the train. "Date of birth?"

The kid gives him a funny, penetrating look. "2233.04. You look a lot better than you did. Not so green."

"Blood type."

"B negative. That's -"

"Rare. I know. I'm a doctor. Height."

"Just right, or so I've been told."

"Kindly cut it out and just answer the damn question, okay, kid?"

" _Kid?_ Seriously?" Kirk sighs and leans back on his elbows. "Six foot one. Weight one-seventy, shoe size twelve, eye color _cerulean_ blue, my second toes are longer than my big ones, I've got three moles that form an equilateral triangle on the back of my right thigh, I swear the highlights are natural, and I can almost touch the tip of my nose with my tongue. Demonstration?"

McCoy considers asking _what, no penis measurements?_ in a sarcastic way, but decides that would just egg him on. And he can't bring himself to get to the sexual proclivities part, so he passes it over for now. "No. Medical history, last five years."

"Want me to start at the most recent?" McCoy raises an eyebrow. "Okay. Most recent it is. Broken nose. Split lip. Mild concussion. Two cracked ribs. Ear infection. Fractured collarbone. Concussion. Fractured thumb and index finger, right hand. Laceration to right shoulder. Fractured jaw. Ear infection, other ear. Punctured lung. Split lip. You getting all this, or you need me to slow down?"

"For fuck's sake," McCoy says in honest dismay, "how the hell did you do all that to yourself?"

"I didn't. Other people mostly did it to _me._ " He adds, wryly, "I generally got 'em back as good as they gave, though. I had the flu right before that last concussion, if you wanna -"

"You know what?" McCoy hits the screen to switch columns in the file with slightly-more-than-necessary force. "That'll do for now. No other infectious diseases, major surgeries, family history of illness, anything like that?"

"Nothing apart from the lung, occasional migraines and those recurring ear infections," says Kirk a little too quickly. "Just getting over one."

"Which side?"

"Uh, left."

McCoy tosses his PADD on the end of the bed and grabs one of the otoscopes off the rack on the wall. "Tilt your head to the right," he says, taking Kirk's chin to hold him still as he looks at the ear, and remarkably, Kirk stays quiet and motionless for the examination, though he does glance up out of the corner of his eye from time to time. "Looks okay." McCoy pops the speculum off the otoscope and tosses it into the wall-mounted sanitizer. "Did you take any antibiotics for it?"

"No. I just let 'em run their course. They don't last too long."

McCoy shakes his head as he sits back down, PADD in hand. "Any allergies?"

"Pineapple, pollen, sensitivity to tree nuts and hydrocortilene. Once they gave me a shot for a migraine and my extremities swelled up to twice their normal size. My eyebrows fell out, too."

"Oh." McCoy wonders how somebody hasn't put this guy in a medical museum yet. "Uh, do you habitually partake in any sexual activity -"

Kirk sits up at that, perking up noticeably. "Yes."

"How is this my life," mutters McCoy. "Any STIs?"

"At the moment?" McCoy stares at him, and Kirk snorts. "Never had any."

"History of harmful or illegal sexual behavior?"

Kirk leans forward, elbows on knees, and looks at him, eyes penetrating. "Doctor Nothin'-But-Your-Bones, you need to work on your pick-up lines. That's the second dud you've used on me today."

"My name is Doctor _McCoy._ Answer the question."

"I thought you said your name was Leonard."

Somehow, that's just the wrong thing to say. The last person to call him _Leonard_ had been his ex-wife in the county court, and he doesn't particularly care to relive that day. "I don't have _time_ for this, Mr. Kirk," he snaps. "As I'm sure you noticed on your way in, there's an entire class of cadets coming through here. A couple thousand of 'em, to be precise. That's what I have to look forward to for the rest of the week - thousands of these questionnaires, thousands of physical exams, and then _archiving_ all the damn information, and classes and homework and training on top of that. So _please_ , if you would, give me a break and _cooperate._ "

Kirk looks a little dazed, and actually straightens up. "Sorry. No - nothing really dangerous, no."

"Approximately how many partners have you had?"

"One hundred and eighteen."

McCoy tries not to gape as he enters the number.

"Point five," Kirk adds, looking thoughtful and totally serious.

McCoy's not even going to ask. Compared with his own grand total of _twelve_ , that's a pretty impressive number, questionable decimals notwithstanding. "And you've really never had an STI."

The kid shrugs. "If I did, no symptoms never manifested. Haven't been checked in a while. But I'm pretty good about keeping clean."

Casting his gaze ceiling-ward, McCoy sets the PADD aside. "God in heaven, kid -"

"Could you maybe stop calling me 'kid'?"

"You prefer 'dumbass'? 'Cause I think it'd be entirely appropriate here. Lots of infections don't have any visible symptoms, 'til one day you break out in full-body blisters and choke to death on your own vomit. Roll your sleeve up; I need a blood sample. I gotta clear you for infection first, then I'll finish up the questionnaire and you can get out of here."

Kirk winces theatrically as McCoy takes the sample, then administers the standard vaccine cocktail he'd already had prepared. If he _does_ have anything, there's nothing in there that should cause any adverse reactions, unless Kirk has an allergy he's never before seen in a human being. Fortunately, there's no swelling, and Kirk's thick brown eyebrows remain perfectly intact. McCoy looks away to deal with the blood sample.

"Huh."

McCoy looks over his shoulder. "What?"

"What? Nothing." Then, thirty seconds later - "Hey, Only-Bonely?"

He rolls his eyes at the centrifuge. "Are you five years old? 'Cause I thought it said twenty-two on your file."

"Assonance. Some poetry for you. Like it?" Kirk's voice is bright and spacey. "Once they made me see a counselor who told me wordplay was a sign of a - um, creative, verbally skilled and intelligent mind."

McCoy pops the samples out of the machine and sticks testing strips in. They turn blue almost immediately. "I doubt they meant that in your case. Looks like you're clean - lucky break, don't screw it up."

"She also said an unpleasant exterior often conceals a fundamental loneliness and need to be loved and cherished. _Lonely_ -Bonely."

When McCoy turns around, stung, to look at Kirk in incredulity, he finds Kirk is lying on his stomach on the table, legs bent and ankles crossed and his chin resting on his folded arms. He's smiling, and his eyes look a little strange - blue gaze glassy and far-away. "Kid?"

"Call me Jim," he says dreamily, staring at a point somewhere over McCoy's left shoulder. "Wow. I think I might very well possibly be completely shitfaced. If Captain Pike sees me he's gonna be pissed. Kinda weird..." He lets out a monstrous, jaw-cracking yawn. "I don't remember drinking anything."

"Jesus," McCoy grunts as he leans down to help Kirk up to a sitting position, then scans him. Body temperature's up, brain activity is sluggish - the kid's drunk, or high, or both, no doubt about it, and he definitely wasn't when he came in, which means there can only be one culprit - the vaccinations. Apparently, his allergies come in all shapes and sizes. "Yeah, you're intoxicated, all right. Those shots I gave you. Hold on."

As he rummages through the supplies for some kind of antidote, Kirk emits a sound not unlike a giggle. "Shots," he says. "I like the ones that come in a glass better, Bones-mah-buddy-blue. You got any in here?"

"No." McCoy finds the right vial and snaps it into the hypo, then doses Kirk in the neck so swiftly he doesn't appear to have even noticed. "And if I did you wouldn't get any of 'em." He lifts Kirk's eyelids to check his pupils, and Kirk just gazes at his ID badge, beatific and slightly cross-eyed.

"Yeah. Doctors drink. Like fish. Do fish even need to drink, though?" Kirk grabs the strings on the front of McCoy's pants and mashes his sweaty face against McCoy's neck, mouth open and his breath sticky-hot. McCoy's nose wrinkles at the same time his whole body prickles with goosebumps. Yeah, it's definitely been too long. "Fuck, I'm _starving._ If wishes were fishes you'd be a giant plate of _nigirizushi_ right now. Wasabi on top. Right on top of your head. Like, right on top -"

"Okay, Kirk. Up we go." McCoy could really use a shot or two of something strong at the moment - but he doesn't say that. "C'mon. You're gonna lie down for a while until that dose does its work." He puts Kirk's arm over his shoulders and grabs him around the waist to help him stumble out down the hall to an empty recovery room, ignoring the questioning looks from passing staff, and dumps his ten-ton, nearly dead-weight body onto one of the beds. Problem is, Kirk won't let his neck go. He pulls McCoy down with him, snuffling wetly into his right ear.

"Y'smell like an armpit."

"Yeah, well, unlike you," McCoy growls, manfully resisting the urge to smother the kid with a pillow, "I haven't had time to find out where I'm living yet, much less go there and shower. So do me a favor and make my life a little easier. Lie here, shut up, come tell me if you're dying."

"Can't tell you f'you told me to shut up, Only-Bonely."

" _Doctor McCoy._ You just press that red button on the bed railing there. See it?"

"Doctor McCoo-ooy," Kirk echoes, looking confused.

"Doctor?"

"It's fine," McCoy snaps at the nurse who's peeking in to see what's going on. "Bad reaction to a vaccine; I'm gonna let him sleep it off in here. That all right?"

"Yes, of course."

"Of course," mumbles Kirk, as the nurse hurries away. "Isn't there like a full-body exam? Can we do that?" He unceremoniously grabs a handful of the front of McCoy's scrub shirt and _yanks_ with surprising force, and McCoy stumbles forward and falls heavily on top of him, sideways across his stomach, with an _oof._

Kirk pokes him hard in the left glute.

" _Ow!_ What the fuck?"

"You are a pillow of heaviness." Kirk's voice is slurred now. "Ugh. Marry me." By the time McCoy manages to get himself loose from Kirk's grip and struggle back to his feet, Kirk is snoring softly, his bee-stung lips hanging open in a vaguely obscene way. McCoy raises an eyebrow, and pushes experimentally up on Kirk's chin to close his mouth, but it just falls open again.

"Okay, then. You stay there. I have to -" He thumbs toward the door, realizes he's talking to an unconscious man who is now drooling down the side of his face, and leaves, shaking his head and rubbing his ass.

*

"History of dangerous sexual behavior?"

" _Vhat?_ " the curly-headed transfer student squeaks, and McCoy pinches the bridge of his own nose, feeling like he's just murdered this kid's innocence. He's _fourteen._ He probably still thinks girls have cooties and babies are grown out in the back garden.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna put down 'no', okay?"

Chekov nods in mute gratitude, then flinches when the door slides open. McCoy spins around in his chair, displeased at the intrusion, to see Kirk leaning against the wall outside, looking a little flushed and sweaty around the hairline but otherwise none the worse for wear.

McCoy frowns at him anyway.

"Hey, McCoy," says Kirk casually. "Hey, kid."

The kid hunches his skinny shoulders a little and nods in greeting. "Do you have _any_ concept of what a closed door means?" McCoy thunders. "It means 'private - do not come the fuck in, James T. Kirk.'"

"About the risky sexual behavior thing, though," Kirk says, picking up some imaginary conversational thread as if two hours hadn't intervened since his ill-fated exam. "I do occasionally find myself getting involved with bad-tempered older men who stash alcohol on their persons. Dangerous, no?"

" _Kirk._ "

"No, but seriously. We just met and you've already drugged me, thrown up on me, and grilled me about my sex life. I think this is the beginning of a -"

"Get _out_ before I toss you out on your ass, Kirk."

Kirk grins, wide and white and charming, and puts one hand to his face with his three middle digits tucked in, in an archaic yet still recognizable gesture. "Call me," he mouths, both eyebrows raised, then scampers off, and the door hisses shut again. McCoy huffs, though his face is a little warm.

"Hospitals much stranger here than in Russia," Chekov remarks in a small voice.

"No shit," says McCoy.

.

  



End file.
